ChrisC
Well-known member
I immensely liked this article because it mimics some of my feelings on Tahoe skiing. Not 100%, but accurate enough.
The author used to be able to ski easily every weekend in Seattle -- I agree.
Realizes you need a ski house share in Tahoe to ski -- I agree.
Does not to play a game of musical bunk beds with a dozen other adults every weekend -- I agree.
I tried to make skiing in Tahoe’s winter paradise work. I avoided sky-high hotel prices by sleeping in my car during nights so cold I woke up with all my food frozen solid. I drove up from San Francisco at odd hours to try to avoid traffic. I waited in pre-dawn lift lines in the hopes of actually getting a few good runs in. But in the end, Tahoe just wasn’t worth it. Somewhat surprisingly, I’ve found an alternative. I just have to drive even farther to get to it.
This season, I’m snowboarding at Mammoth Mountain. People gasp when I tell them I’m driving seven hours one-way just to go snowboarding. If you told me three years ago I was regularly doing this drive I’d never believe you. But I’ve never been happier.
Mammoth’s high-speed chairs, like the Broadway Express pictured here, quickly move people up the mountain.
Lester Black/SFGATE
That’s partially because Mammoth Lakes is an actual functioning community. There’s a free bus system, manageable traffic, a mountain that can handle crowds and a friendly atmosphere that is a blast of refreshing mountain air compared to Tahoe’s toxic blend of billionaires and angry townies. But my happiness isn’t just because Mammoth is a great mountain, it’s also because I know that Tahoe is a total s—tshow.
FILE: Skiers crowd in line to enter a gondola lift to the top of Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
George Rose/Getty Images
I moved to San Francisco three years ago from Seattle, a place where city-dwellers wanting to ski every single weekend isn’t a fairy tale dream like it is in California. Seattle has four ski resorts within two hours of the city, including one just 50 miles away on an interstate that rarely shuts down, making it possible to work a full-time job in the city and still ski your face off.
When I moved to San Francisco, I thought maintaining a skiing lifestyle would still be possible. I looked up the distance and saw Tahoe was only three and a half hours away from the city, so I thought how bad could it be? It turns out that drive time was just a Google Maps mirage.
The Lake Tahoe Basin is a recipe for traffic gridlock. There are over a dozen ski resorts within a few hours’ drive of 10 million people, but they are accessed by only a handful of highways. That means the 3.5-hour drive I naively thought I could make from San Francisco can easily stretch to over nine hours.
Tahoe adds an insult to injury, because not only is there intense traffic getting there, there’s also nonstop gridlock as soon as you exit the interstate. It’s not unusual for someone to spend a winter weekend in Tahoe alternating between hourslong traffic jams like they’re shuffling between buffets on a cruise ship.
FILE: Traffic on Interstate 80 in February 2024.
Caltrans District 3
FILE: Skiers flock to Palisades Tahoe ski resort in Olympic Valley, Calif., on March 4, 2024.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
The traffic also isn’t relegated to the roads. Tahoe’s ski lifts are packed throughout most weekends, and the worst among them is Palisades, the area’s largest ski resort. It has some of the best terrain in North America, but if you go there on a weekend you’ll only be salivating for its chutes and bowls while standing in a 45-minute lift line. Palisades’ owner, the massive Alterra Mountain Company, looked at its weekend lift problems and decided to spend $65 million building a gondola that transports people between two parking lots rather than building anything that will get more people up the mountain.
All of these challenges were on my mind when I was preparing for this season, yet like a true addict I couldn’t give up snowboarding. In fact, I decided to double down and spend even more money on the Sisyphean pursuit of snowboarding while living in the city. I decided to get a “ski lease,” a term I had never heard growing up in Seattle. The idea that I needed to pay for my own apartment in the city AND pay for a lease in the mountains just to be able to ski was laughable the first year I moved here, but after three years of trying to ski without a lease in the mountains, I realized this wild California invention was actually going to become necessary.
So, I started looking for leases. In Tahoe’s exorbitant real estate market, a ski lease means cramming into packed shared houses. It looked like buying an expensive ticket to play a game of musical bunk beds with a dozen other adults every weekend. I’ve couchsurfed in plenty of undesirable accommodations, but the idea of spending thousands of dollars to do so didn’t sit right.
I broadened my ski lease search to any ski resort in California. I eventually stumbled on a private room in an old A-frame house in Mammoth Lakes that was renting for an affordable monthly rate. I hesitated at first, knowing it would be nearly twice as far as Tahoe from my home, but then I remembered I-80 on a winter weekend and realized this far drive was well worth it.
An aerial view of Mammoth Mountain from 2023 shows snow-filled homes and condominiums built alongside the ski area.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
I’m now in my second month of splitting time between Mammoth and San Francisco, and I couldn’t imagine the idea of planning another Tahoe weekend. There’s no getting around the fact that it takes a lot of time to get here, but I can leave San Francisco on Sundays and go against the normal Tahoe snow crowds and rarely hit traffic.
And when I get to Mammoth, it feels like I’ve left the rest of California behind. I take the free bus to the grocery store and the ski hill. The locals are friendly and welcoming. The tourists, who predominantly seem to come from Los Angeles or San Diego, are jubilant and just happy to be here, unlike Tahoe, where tourists are as fussy as a tech bro who regrets buying a Cybertruck.
Mammoth's free shuttle bus, Gondola and slopes at Mammoth.
That positive mood seems to spread to the mountain itself, like the Angelenos have brought beach vibes to the Eastern Sierra. People are always starting conversations on lift rides up the mountain, sharing tips on where the best skiing is and what’s fun in town. And the skiing terrain is excellent, with huge steep faces above treeline, powder-filled tree runs spread around the lower mountain and the biggest terrain park in California.
There are certainly crowds at Mammoth, the town estimates 1.3 million people visit every winter, but the mountain’s natural symmetry with a wide ski area built around a single peak rising over 11,000 feet above sea level allows crowds to easily spread out across the mountain. Dave McCoy, the founder of Mammoth who died at age 104 in 2020, clearly made an excellent decision when he decided to set up a rope tow in what was then the middle of nowhere.
Mammoth is owned by Alterra, the same mega-company that owns Palisades in Tahoe, but the company appears to have better ideas in Mammoth, where at least it has yet to build a gondola to nowhere. And Mammoth’s management channels the ski area’s crowds into legitimately cool things, like an apres-skiing dance party that draws a massive crowd every weekend (and has public transit so you can party without driving in the snow).
Mammoth’s natural symmetry with a wide ski area built around a single peak allows crowds to easily spread out across the mountain to areas like Chair 12.
Lester Black/SFGATE
I can already hear locals in Truckee celebrating my decision to give up on Tahoe. That sentiment isn’t unique. Mountain locals across America think city people like me should stay out of the mountains. But the truth is my departure won’t solve the gridlock. For every San Franciscan like me who gives up on Tahoe, there will be another person trying to make it work. I’m just happy that person is no longer me.
The author used to be able to ski easily every weekend in Seattle -- I agree.
Realizes you need a ski house share in Tahoe to ski -- I agree.
Does not to play a game of musical bunk beds with a dozen other adults every weekend -- I agree.
Tahoe is a mess, so I found a California ski area that actually works
Column: Tahoe’s toxic blend of billionaires and angry townies has become unbearable
I tried to make skiing in Tahoe’s winter paradise work. I avoided sky-high hotel prices by sleeping in my car during nights so cold I woke up with all my food frozen solid. I drove up from San Francisco at odd hours to try to avoid traffic. I waited in pre-dawn lift lines in the hopes of actually getting a few good runs in. But in the end, Tahoe just wasn’t worth it. Somewhat surprisingly, I’ve found an alternative. I just have to drive even farther to get to it.
This season, I’m snowboarding at Mammoth Mountain. People gasp when I tell them I’m driving seven hours one-way just to go snowboarding. If you told me three years ago I was regularly doing this drive I’d never believe you. But I’ve never been happier.
Mammoth’s high-speed chairs, like the Broadway Express pictured here, quickly move people up the mountain.
Lester Black/SFGATE
That’s partially because Mammoth Lakes is an actual functioning community. There’s a free bus system, manageable traffic, a mountain that can handle crowds and a friendly atmosphere that is a blast of refreshing mountain air compared to Tahoe’s toxic blend of billionaires and angry townies. But my happiness isn’t just because Mammoth is a great mountain, it’s also because I know that Tahoe is a total s—tshow.
FILE: Skiers crowd in line to enter a gondola lift to the top of Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
George Rose/Getty Images
I moved to San Francisco three years ago from Seattle, a place where city-dwellers wanting to ski every single weekend isn’t a fairy tale dream like it is in California. Seattle has four ski resorts within two hours of the city, including one just 50 miles away on an interstate that rarely shuts down, making it possible to work a full-time job in the city and still ski your face off.
When I moved to San Francisco, I thought maintaining a skiing lifestyle would still be possible. I looked up the distance and saw Tahoe was only three and a half hours away from the city, so I thought how bad could it be? It turns out that drive time was just a Google Maps mirage.
The Lake Tahoe Basin is a recipe for traffic gridlock. There are over a dozen ski resorts within a few hours’ drive of 10 million people, but they are accessed by only a handful of highways. That means the 3.5-hour drive I naively thought I could make from San Francisco can easily stretch to over nine hours.
Tahoe adds an insult to injury, because not only is there intense traffic getting there, there’s also nonstop gridlock as soon as you exit the interstate. It’s not unusual for someone to spend a winter weekend in Tahoe alternating between hourslong traffic jams like they’re shuffling between buffets on a cruise ship.
FILE: Traffic on Interstate 80 in February 2024.
Caltrans District 3
FILE: Skiers flock to Palisades Tahoe ski resort in Olympic Valley, Calif., on March 4, 2024.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
The traffic also isn’t relegated to the roads. Tahoe’s ski lifts are packed throughout most weekends, and the worst among them is Palisades, the area’s largest ski resort. It has some of the best terrain in North America, but if you go there on a weekend you’ll only be salivating for its chutes and bowls while standing in a 45-minute lift line. Palisades’ owner, the massive Alterra Mountain Company, looked at its weekend lift problems and decided to spend $65 million building a gondola that transports people between two parking lots rather than building anything that will get more people up the mountain.
All of these challenges were on my mind when I was preparing for this season, yet like a true addict I couldn’t give up snowboarding. In fact, I decided to double down and spend even more money on the Sisyphean pursuit of snowboarding while living in the city. I decided to get a “ski lease,” a term I had never heard growing up in Seattle. The idea that I needed to pay for my own apartment in the city AND pay for a lease in the mountains just to be able to ski was laughable the first year I moved here, but after three years of trying to ski without a lease in the mountains, I realized this wild California invention was actually going to become necessary.
So, I started looking for leases. In Tahoe’s exorbitant real estate market, a ski lease means cramming into packed shared houses. It looked like buying an expensive ticket to play a game of musical bunk beds with a dozen other adults every weekend. I’ve couchsurfed in plenty of undesirable accommodations, but the idea of spending thousands of dollars to do so didn’t sit right.
I broadened my ski lease search to any ski resort in California. I eventually stumbled on a private room in an old A-frame house in Mammoth Lakes that was renting for an affordable monthly rate. I hesitated at first, knowing it would be nearly twice as far as Tahoe from my home, but then I remembered I-80 on a winter weekend and realized this far drive was well worth it.
An aerial view of Mammoth Mountain from 2023 shows snow-filled homes and condominiums built alongside the ski area.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
I’m now in my second month of splitting time between Mammoth and San Francisco, and I couldn’t imagine the idea of planning another Tahoe weekend. There’s no getting around the fact that it takes a lot of time to get here, but I can leave San Francisco on Sundays and go against the normal Tahoe snow crowds and rarely hit traffic.
And when I get to Mammoth, it feels like I’ve left the rest of California behind. I take the free bus to the grocery store and the ski hill. The locals are friendly and welcoming. The tourists, who predominantly seem to come from Los Angeles or San Diego, are jubilant and just happy to be here, unlike Tahoe, where tourists are as fussy as a tech bro who regrets buying a Cybertruck.
Mammoth's free shuttle bus, Gondola and slopes at Mammoth.
That positive mood seems to spread to the mountain itself, like the Angelenos have brought beach vibes to the Eastern Sierra. People are always starting conversations on lift rides up the mountain, sharing tips on where the best skiing is and what’s fun in town. And the skiing terrain is excellent, with huge steep faces above treeline, powder-filled tree runs spread around the lower mountain and the biggest terrain park in California.
There are certainly crowds at Mammoth, the town estimates 1.3 million people visit every winter, but the mountain’s natural symmetry with a wide ski area built around a single peak rising over 11,000 feet above sea level allows crowds to easily spread out across the mountain. Dave McCoy, the founder of Mammoth who died at age 104 in 2020, clearly made an excellent decision when he decided to set up a rope tow in what was then the middle of nowhere.
Mammoth is owned by Alterra, the same mega-company that owns Palisades in Tahoe, but the company appears to have better ideas in Mammoth, where at least it has yet to build a gondola to nowhere. And Mammoth’s management channels the ski area’s crowds into legitimately cool things, like an apres-skiing dance party that draws a massive crowd every weekend (and has public transit so you can party without driving in the snow).
Mammoth’s natural symmetry with a wide ski area built around a single peak allows crowds to easily spread out across the mountain to areas like Chair 12.
Lester Black/SFGATE
I can already hear locals in Truckee celebrating my decision to give up on Tahoe. That sentiment isn’t unique. Mountain locals across America think city people like me should stay out of the mountains. But the truth is my departure won’t solve the gridlock. For every San Franciscan like me who gives up on Tahoe, there will be another person trying to make it work. I’m just happy that person is no longer me.
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Heavenly did a lot worse than Kirkwood last season and Vail has owned it longer